This Week in Startups - Monetizing BeReal, Bogus accounts by US Military, iPhone 14 camera bug, Twilio layoffs | E1564

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Jason and Molly kick the week off by breaking down the team's favorite new social media app, BeReal, and its plans to add paid features (15:16). Then, they cover how platforms found fake accounts suspected of being run by the US military (31:12). After, they continue with more tech news, including Apple's iPhone 14 Pro bug (42:25) and Twilio's plans to make "anti-racist" layoffs (49:29). They end the show with a We Live in the Future segment, highlighting the startup TransPod (1:03:06). 0:00) J+M tee up today's segments!  (2:45) The hosts recap the weekend  (14:01) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedin.com/twist  (15:16) BeReal's plans to add paid features  (29:46) Notion - Sign up for free at https://notion.com/twist   (31:12) Platforms found fake accounts suspected of being run by the US military (40:59) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (42:25) The iPhone 14 Pro camera has a camera bug  (49:29) Twilio's plans to make "anti-racist" layoffs (1:03:06) WLITF: TransPod's affordable ultra-high-speed transportation  FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey, everybody, we're back. It's Monday. Oh, my God, big week on this week in startups. Happy Monday. We're going to start the show with some tech news. We're going to talk about everybody's favorite social network, be real, makes me look like a troll. And apparently I don't care because I'm still using it every day. And now I'm even getting ready to pay for it.

Yeah, they're going to, apparently they don't want to use ads. I have an idea for them to split the difference and maybe have some subscriptions and some ads. We'll talk about my idea. Molly will react to it. And speaking of social media, it turns out the plastic. for finding the fake accounts that it may or may not turn out to be created by our intelligence agencies in the U.S. military. Yes, and possibly the biggest problem is how easy they were to sniff out.

Then we go into the latest with Apple. You always get penalized for being an Apple early adopter. There's a little bit of a bug in the iPhone 14 Pro camera. We'll break that down a little bit for you. And then we'll cover Jeff Lawson, friend of the pod and founder, CEO of Willio, saying they are planning to make anti-racist layoffs, what that means, and how we should think about layoffs in the era of diversity and inclusion. And that is not all.

We also have another great segment of We Live in the Future. We're talking about Maglev super fast, fully electric transportation. But it ever happens. If it ever happens, in Canada, they raised a half billion dollars. They want to go 600 miles an hour. God, I hope this happens. We live in the future every month. Monday and like every other Monday, it's going to be a great show.

Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as it's people and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash choice. Notion is one place for notes, docs, projects, and everyday work that goes way beyond a wiki. Get started for free at Notion.com slash Twist. And O-Doo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your staff as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever and right now O-DU is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at O-D-com slash twist.

That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist All right, Molly, it's Monday, we're back Oh my Lord Is it going to be a big week this week Or do you think it's going to slow down? No, it's never going to slow down ever It's never going to slow down

How's your weekend? We're full steam ahead on the crisis And it's not going to stop I had a lovely, I had a lovely weekend of like friends and coziness And football And socializing and cooking Like, it just could not have been more delightful.

My Operation Crazy Hummingbird Lady is just like in full swing. They're all over my front yard. It's working. Wait, hold on. I'm a hundred years. Wait, this is a new thing. I know you were doing letterboxing of spoons. But that's, that project's done.

I finished that. I finished that. And now I'm on operation. What crazy on stuff are you doing now? I just want to attract all the hummingbirds because I love them so much. Hummingbirds are amazing. I like, I redecorated my stoop. with my fall mums and I planted some lanternas to attract even more hummingbirds and it is working.

My front yard is filled with hummingbirds and I'm just like a nutty old bird lady. You literally are transforming. I'm transforming into a dad. I'm like literally talking about my nest thermostat and doors being open and you're doing hummingbirds and letterboxes. We're turning into our parents. This is what's happening. Oh my lord. But you should see my friend's stupid. So we're ready for fall. I'm literally going to have like a crockpot party. Like I'm like, It is fall. And it's going to be 80 degrees in two days. So look for the space to end quickly.

But the hummingbird thing is working. It's working so well that during one of our investment meetings recently, one of them flew into the house. So that was a problem. That's interesting. Yeah, we have, we've got like California door situation, like large sliding doors, open outsource space. And frequently, we'll get a hummingbird or a sparrow to come in.

Luckily, the birds of prey that surround the peninsula here. you know, below San Francisco all the way down. We have birds of prey everywhere. Oh, yeah. They're everywhere. I mean, we have turkey vultures. We have hawks. We have bald eagles now on the peninsula.

They've been spotted multiple times. Bald eagle population roaring back. So I feel good about that. But I went to the East Bay, took my three daughters on a daddy daughter date. It was very nice. And shout out to, you know, my wife's Korean. So my kids are half Korean. So I try to really work on the Korean culture stuff.

So we went for what's called Ja-Jem-Yung or Ja-Jem-Yung. It's a Korean dish that I'm absolutely obsessed with. It's noodles with like onions and pork on top of it. Incredible. Yes, please. Amazing. And so I was getting my eye exam list week, which I have to talk to you about because we live in the future. Because, you know, I got my grandpa glasses when I make a day trade.

I make a J-trade. Same. I literally got laser eye surgery and still have to wear readers. So what did you find out because I need it? Okay. there are eye drops. Oh yeah, I heard about this.

You're going to try them? She gave them to me on Friday. And I'm looking at a piece of paper. I had just done a test. And there were five paragraphs and I got to the third one that I put my readers on, you know, my grandpa readers that you just get for two bucks off of Amazon, five, whatever. And excuse me, the drops, I can read like I have the grandpa glasses on.

So, whoa, what's going on here? So there is this new drop. get. I got a prescription for it. It's sold out right now. But I'm going to be getting it later this week. I'm waiting for them to fill the prescription. I leave the place 20 minutes later and take out my phone, which I cannot read Robin Hood or superhuman with these tiny fonts. Because those two apps don't change. Superhuman in particular. Like, why does it have to be so small? Okay. Some folks like to have a design aesthetic and, you know, they have great eyesight. And so great. But you know, when you change on your iPhone, the size of the font. Some apps

will change other, but some apps don't because it will break the design that they've gone for. So they're just like put on glasses. Anyway, I pull out Robin Hood, I pull out Superhuman, and I can see for the first time in three years. And it really works, yeah. It works. And it's sting? I've heard some people say that they can sting. When you first put them in, it's like you got a little pepper. You know, you ever get mustard of pepper in your eye by accident? Or something like a little pepper dust. For five, It felt like it just had to blink three times and it was fine.

Okay. This is life-changing. If this is the result and then I looked at my Tesla, my Model Y, I think it's called Benuity is the name of these drops. I look at the maps and I see the map clear while I'm driving. So now I was having this issue when I wanted to use the interface. Some aspects of the interface would be too small for me to see and I had to put my grandpa glasses on halfway down, look at the road, then look down. It was disaster.

Oh, that's, yeah. That's danger. Vuity. What it's called. Yeah, I was reading about that. I read the New York Times because I was in the same boat. I was just like, this is absurd. I, you know, paid all this money, went through this whole Lasic thing, you know, fixed my, I'm going to die in an earthquake vision, but still have to wear readers. It seems like, people have reported the stinging and a little bit of like red, like droopy dog thing. But honestly, I feel like that's because this is version one. Yeah.

And the fact that this exists and is just going to keep getting better is a game changer. So game changer. My, what do you call a doctor who works on your eyes? What are they called? Optometrist. Okay. Listen, I don't, I have never gone. So this is my first time since I was a kid.

So the optometrist happens to be Korean. She's friendly with my wife who goes there. And she told me about this Jajim young place. So I went to Oakland. So I got, this is a big weekend for me. I got a great recommendation for Ja-Jim-Yung. So the name of the place is Gangnam, G-A-N-G-N-A-M, J-A-M, J-A-N-G. This is as good as the dragon on Vermont in L-A.

L-A, we have the biggest Korean district outside of Seoul in Korea. And I don't live there anymore. So anyway. I know, yeah, this is like our little Korea town. This little stretch of Oakland is totally Korea-town. you get super authentic food and they are helpfully tell you how to eat it a lot of times.

Well, they will, yes. They give you the pajong, like the little dishes around it. They'll give you vinegar. They'll give you soy sauce. They give you a couple of dipping sauces. You need to ask. And it's okay to ask.

They'll totally tell you. Yeah. Like for some, when you're getting barbecue, they give you sesame with salt in it. And you're like, what is this for? It's only for the beef. You don't put the baguogi in there because that's already addressed.

It's for the beef that has nothing on it. No marinade. Anyway, then I went to a place called milk bomb. So I just looked, and I told the girl, Here's all the highest rated ice cream. Here's the pictures.

And they see a donut filled with ice cream with toppings on. Yep. Which for six-year-olds and a 12-old's fire is like, I mean, head explode. So we went and got that. Then Sunday, I took them to like some gymnastic stuff. And then for breakfast burritos, which, you know, breakfast burrito with a hash brown and bacon in it is, I never thought you could put a hash brown inside a burrito. They went crazy for that. Then if there wasn't enough going on this weekend, because it was a rainy weekend, I took them to an escape room.

Scape rooms are amazing. Highly recommend. I'm going to do it for us for a team activity, but- Do it. So fun. It was great. It was great. Yeah, I don't know.

I've never done one and I have no good reason. I think it's just like the last couple companies I worked for were not based here. Also, journalists never do anything fun. We don't do any team bonding because we're also-s-competing. Yeah. Just complain. Be cynical. Be mad about stuff.

Just be mad. Trust me, I was one. I know. It's complaining about stuff. The world's going to hell. Man. World's going to hell. Why would you bond? You're just a lone wolf out here trying to...

World's coming to an end anyway. Trying to bring down a president. It's your highest, best goal. Exactly. Well, you know, now it's... I am so optimistic. I feel super optimistic, so... I love this, by the way.

I got a little work done because it was a rainy Sunday. Watch football? Oh, my God. What a football again? Who's your team? I'm a little teamless. I grew up as a little team. a Packers fan because you know, I grew up in Montana and North Dakota. In Montana, you either

rooted for the Broncos or the Packers and I just could not. I don't know if you remember the Broncos in the 90s. That was kind of a thing. Yeah. Everybody in their full, you know, had to Tokyo gear. Yeah. So for a long time I was a Packers fan. Then I sort of stopped being a Packers fan kind of just in time. Then the Raiders moved. The Niners just don't do much for me, but I guess it's time. I don't know. My brother's just so. Have you been to a 49ers game? Well, we're going to, We're going to go, my brother and I are going to the Bucks Niners game in December because we want to see Tom Brady. Ah. And what is almost what may or may not be his last scene?

Well, I bought, I accidentally bought two extra tickets. Oh, great. Pretty good seats. So if you want them, I feel like I owe you. Yeah, sure. How good are they? Well, they're not Jake. How good?

They're club seats. That's good. I'm friendly with Jed York, who I think is the owner and runs it. So you're fine. So you don't need my job. ticket. No, no, but he's incredibly generous to me. Like, he's like, hey, you want to come on the field or, you know, whatever. So shout out to my guy,

Jed York, but I've gone to maybe two or three games down there. What a great experience. And I've gotten really, I haven't gone on the field yet, but I've gotten some, the sweets there is quite an experience. I don't even to, the suite level is bonkers. Like, they'll just make you whatever food you want and you get's incredible view and they lowered the sweets down to like, so the sweets are actually like a good level.

See, that's great. I feel like sweets are always too high. This is the dumbest thing I have ever done. The stupidest, oh, ethics journalism thing I have ever done was that I got invited to go to WrestleMania at Levi when it first opened. And I was like, I don't think it would be totally ethical for me to do that, which is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. Because I should have

gone to freaking WrestleMania at Levi Stadium. That would have been awesome. Well, now, see, now you're a venture capitalist doing random acts of journalism on this program. No conflict, no interest. No conflict, no interest. I mean, if somebody wants to come and they're a founder of a company, have us come to their sponsor, let's go.

We would do that. Silicon Valley Bank, shout out. Get us in your Sweet. Whoever. We'll come. We'll be a nineers fans. I guess. I could, you know. And we did a little nice thing. Brad Gersoner had us over to his barn series, the little private series. You and I did our first public experience. That was fun for you. Yeah. It was great. It was awesome. Jason and I triggered the technocrats together. I found out subsequently there was like a major Facebook and a major Google person there. So when I was giving up the major Facebook person actually. We're good now. Oh, okay. Good. Yeah. Oh, you're Cinderella and cleaned up my mess. Uh, no, I was where she yelled at me. It was my, she was upset at you. Yeah. That's good, it's good to have debates.

All right. She's doing God's work. I'll tell you what. Anyway, yes, we got a lot of news to talk about. Not fun. No. All right. I think we got through everything.

It's a lot on the dog. We got through the banter here. We got through the banter. We got through the banter. So we can catch up, which is key. It's key. I think it's good. People, you know, people are starting to call the show Molly and Jake Al in the morning.

So they like the, you know, Molly and Jake Al of this. We need to. get some sound effects. We should definitely do like like molly and JCal in the morning you know like whole Z100 Zoo radio package done. These days every new potential hire

can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business because listen, we're living in turbulent times so you want to be 100% certain that you have access to the most qualified elite candidates that's why you need to check out LinkedIn jobs. LinkedIn jobs helps find

the right people for your team faster and they'll do it for free. Then you can add your job and the purple hiring frame around your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring. They've got tons of simple tools over there at LinkedIn jobs to make screening questions easy so you can find the candidates who really want the jobs. And of course, you know they have the skills and the experience all out there on everybody's profile, people voting for what skills people have to validate that for you. I don't have to explain how awesome LinkedIn is and all these features, you know that because you're on it every day. And this is why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the

qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. And did you know every week, you know, 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn. That's right. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash twist. That's LinkedIn.com slash T-W-I-S-T to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply. I'll tell you what I make you land. Did not do yesterday. I didn't do my be real because I was just having such a cozy blanket day and I didn't want to. Because you know who is Presh? Presh is timing his B Reels. He is not being real with his B Reels.

I busted him at that exact event. He's like, did you do your B reel already? I'm like, yeah, when the notification came up, he saved it. He is saving his B Reels. Because, you know, the point of be real is when you get the notification, you're supposed to be real. Right. No. Presh is just hanging on to the notification.

on to the notification and tell something cool is happening and then taking his picture and posting late on purpose. Interesting. When he's doing something cool. So people are already hack and be real in a million different ways. But all this shows you is that it's the thing we're all talking about and the thing that everybody's doing and the question we've all been asking is like, great, when is it going to make some money and how?

And is that going to ruin it? And today we have some news. Oh, we do have news on it. Fantastic. We did have news a couple weeks ago that they raised a month around. Yep. Congratulations to them. So be real.

And we had news last week that TikTok outzucked them. Stone cold. Stone cold, zucked them. Yep. Stone cold. And stole everything. Just zucked them hard. Just no shame in that game at all.

Like copy pasta, straight up. And then now it turns out that Be Real is starting to talk about how to make money. And according to the Financial Times, Be Real is based in France, we should note. according to the Financial Times, Be Real is, quote, keen to avoid the pitfalls of its U.S. competitors. And by pitfalls, they mean paid advertising. Okay. Be Real is going to try to monetize without advertising.

Let's see. It's recent raise. So they're going to do merch? No. I mean, they're going to have to do merch, I guess. They're going to introduce some sort of paid features. Nice, but you're not going to make them. You're not going to, not for the amount of venture capital areas.

Merch is not going to work. They're not doing a live event. So it just leaves one thing. Subscription. Exactly. Yep. So is that what they're doing? Apparently.

They are going to introduce some paid features. Great. And try to get people to try to monetize that way. Perfect. At least it's convincing investors, it seems. They're in the process of raising an $85 million series B at a $600 million dollar valuation. Led by Yuri Milner, my pal, from DST Global. Uri famously did the $10 billion-ish round for Facebook.

As we learned in the power law book, he bought some shares lower and some preferred shares higher to blend his price, I think more to the $8 billion valuation. Anyway, that was one of the great bets of all time in Silicon Valley. And everybody that Uri Mili was paying too much. So here again, he was betting on a $600 million valuation for a company with no revenue.

that wants to do subscription, but I think he's going to do it again. I think this company is smart. Yeah, somebody should try at scale doing subscriptions. I mean, I, right? Like, I guess I would like to see someone try that. It's unclear what those would be. It sounds like they aren't likely to launch until Q3, 2023. I am having a heart.

I mean, honestly, like, if it's a yearly thing, like, if I just pay and download it from Like, I'm thinking of the thing I, the app I pay the most for is all trails. I pay for that too. Right. I use it four times a year. I probably saved to my life on this trip in Montana where we use the downloaded topo maps to figure out, like, literally how to find a path, you know, path. That is the paid feature, right? You can download maps and have a wall offline.

Multiple views. You can get the topo lines in the satellite and have it all offline and not die out. What's a topo line? That's topography or something? Topography. So you can see, like, if you're supposed to be, if you're down the hill and you're supposed to be up the hill, you can use. the topography map to figure out what elevation you should be at. And what is it?

I think it's 60 bucks a year for all trails. I think it's a little less, 20 or 30, something like that. Maybe I always get it on sale. It's pretty cheap. So I could imagine a scenario in which I was like, you know what, be real. Sure. I'll down, I'll pay 10 bucks for the year, 20 bucks for the year. I'd pay 20 bucks for the year for Be Real.

I think people would pay. And you don't need everybody to pay. You just need 10% of users to pay. Right. Exactly. To have a huge business. What's there? How many people are you?

in this thing? Apparently advertising has not been completely ruled out according to the financial times, but they don't want it to be intrusive if it occurs. Let's see how many. I know there was a hundred million, right? 15 million daily active users. Oh, 15 million daily active users. Yeah. Okay. So I wonder what there... But it was 10,000 users a year ago. 15 million a day is a lot of people. 15 million a day. So these are debt, this is cumulative downloads or downloads per day? Worldwide installs from the AppSoll and Google Play, but it doesn't say, no, that, does it ever go down? Does the chart we're looking at ever go down?

If it doesn't, then it's cumulative. So, and there's no comm is there. So I can't see if that's a billion downloads or something of the app. That's million. It's a million? Or it's 1.2 million? Million. 12 million downloads.

15, no, it can't because it's 15 million daily. Because there's 15 million daily. So it's 120 million downloads or 1.2 million downloads or 1.2 million downloads? Or 1. a billion. So it would make sense to me that it was over a billion downloads because they have 15 million a day. We 1% of the downloads using it a day. They probably have triple the number of monthlies. If they have 15 million a day, they could have upwards of 50 million a month. If you were to get of the 15 million daily 10% to pay, that would be 1.5, 1.5 paying $30 a year

would be $100 million in just pure profit a year. Great start. And if they're 10x from there, billion dollars a year in revenue. So great start. And if they really do make the pitch, which I, which no social media so far has had the muscles, the biceps, the chutzpah, the chutzpah, to pitch. The ball. Yeah. Like nobody's just come along and said, hey, we'll give you a really great nice, nice, clean experience with no targeted advertising that follows you all over and stocks you. If you pay. Nobody has ever like just said it just like that. And it would be really interesting to see. And then you should get a little extra. Like you can keep your B-Real photos and you can do this with them and you know, whatever, like a little additional.

Here's what I would do. We'll see. You do 30 bucks a year, which is five bucks a month, right? No, it's less. Five bucks a month would be 60. So it's $2.50 a month. $250 a month. $30 a year.

You get a special logo on your name and you get to do like one or two extra features. like maybe I could get extra lenses or I get to do an extra B-rail at the time I want or something with the time issue. Maybe you get to do a retake or something. But anyway, come up with something fun. Then I would sell one advertiser a day gets to sponsor Be Real. And that sponsor gets to have a little logo at the bottom left of every image that shared that day. So if it was The Walking Dead So good. So good at that. I'm a good product.

Anyway, if it was the Walking Dead new season, if it was some new Disney film, if it was the new Prius, whatever, your jam is. They get a little image that comes up on the bottom left, does a little spin and then disappears. It becomes really small. So one global advertiser a day, you price it at a premium $200 CPM. So, you know, it winds up costing a million bucks a day. And you just say, you know, to whoever, it's a million. million bucks a day. And these days before the holiday and before, you know, what they call it? Is it Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Those are three million. You want those days. Those are three.

They're premium days. Every other day is a million. And you can buy them now. Watch people race in because their scarcity and buy all that inventory out. And then they get the affinity of supporting a super cool hipster place. That's how I would do it. And no tracking. The only tracking that occurs is if you click. So no tracking on the app. If you choose to go to their website, Well, of course, you're going to get tracked. The end. What do you like? Rate my idea.

I mean, you are a good product guy. You're good. You're good, kid. Oh, good. By the way, you know, this guy dropped out of high school, the kid who built it. I want to get this guy on the program. What's his name? Xavier.

Wait, the school was Xavier Neels. 42. That's the coding school that he went to. He went to this coding school in France called Xavier Neels, 42. Huh. That's a weird name for a school, but okay. Yeah. So he dropped that. He doesn't have a high school diploma.

He went to six years old. And now he's going to be worth like, if he owns 25% of the business, I don't know how many co-founders got. Kids rather 100 million. Good for him. And they're talking about him. This is why you don't go to school. Fantastic. Go to developer school.

Amazing. Love it. I had not realized, actually, side note on until today that the Figma founder was a teal fellow. He was a Teal Fellow. Yeah. But I did not see Peter Teal anywhere in the breakdown of the money made. I don't either. So this is a failure on Teal's part.

Who took the 100,000 to not go to college? Is that what the Teal fellows did? Yeah. Listen, you can say what you want about Peter Thiel. That was a brilliant idea. I love that idea. Like, you know, it's super disruptive. It made an interesting statement.

Here we are talking about it. And now it has an outcome. Right. So what he did was, he's like, I'll pay $100,000 to quit and go do something interesting. in your life. What did that do? It brought every iconoclastic pirate rebel samurai in the world to say, yeah, give me my hundie. And yeah, you're a weirdo with interesting ideas, Peter Till. I'll come hang out with you and have coffee. Brilliant move. He's like, I want all the weirdo mutants in the

world and I'll pay you $100,000 to come here. Peter Thiel has his moments. He has his moments. I will say that. I just watched to talk with him about California. He did he have like some talk at one of these Republican things. And his California talk was surprisingly self-aware, and he went through the Republicans' like position on things, and he savaged Republicans for being like the most negative group of people and not being like super positive with an actual plan, but just being like regressive and anti-everything. And he said, we need to have like a prosperity plan that actually is positive. We're too negative. I was like, go Peter. Wow, self-awareness. I'll send it the link. Cool, cool.

I'm going. Where's his money going? Well, whatever. I mean, you could do both things at the same time. You could be betting for your team. You could be a genius and also perpetrating evil. Yes, 100%. Well, I mean, there's a million things about Peter and his positions that are incongruous

because these people who are partisan, their partisanship and their own personal opinions, like they're totally partisan and they just want to win, even if it's against their personal opinions. and Peter's gay and married. And they can't find 10 Republicans to do the marriage bill. I mean, it's like, hello, like, you're all pro-gay, or the majority of Republicans are pro-gay marriage. Why would they vote for it? It's like, oh, they don't want to lose the evangelicals.

I mean, it's just the height of cynicism and unprincipled behavior because they just want to win without actually thinking about the issues. So I'd let me put that aside, but. Yes, anyway, I did not. I just had not known that he was a teal fellow. And obviously, clearly, some of these alternative paths are producing. They're not going to all, it's a power law thing. Don't assume you're going to have the same outcome by dropping out of high school and going to coding school.

However, you're going to do better than if you went to college. If you become a good program, I'd tell you that. You think so? 100%. If you go to coding school instead of college, we had a thousand people do that. Let's say 100 for easier. 100 people, complete coding school, complete college. and let's just put independent of degree in college, but a non-coding degree.

Non-coding degree, bachelor's coding, who's going to be making more money? Because coding school is only six months a year. Let's just say it's a year coding school versus a four-year degree. Who do you think is going to be doing better in the workplace five years in? Making more money. No. I mean, if you went to school for finance, you're going to be making more money. Maybe.

Undergraduate degree of finance? I'm not so sure on average. Yeah, I don't know. You're probably right. I don't know if we're right in the long term. I worry, like, I think that we're rapidly approaching a tipping point where computers are going to be doing the coding. So there's possible. So that learning the design around it or the implementation or the business plan, like that might end up being valuable.

We might like circle back around. That could be funny, actually, because it used to be the developers were like, yeah, dime a dozen. I just see a couple developers. It's really the Steve Jobs who coordinates the whole thing who's important. And increasingly, we're for front end stuff or, you know, like, I don't know, we're creeping up on that. I think these tools. No, there are tools that like the, you know, the Google, the Gmail thing where it tells you like what you're about to write and he guesses your next three words.

Yeah. There is the equivalent now on GitHub and other services, GitLab, whatever it is. That will write some of the code for you. I'll say, hey, oh, you're doing a login for Facebook. Boom, here's the code. Or I think you're doing that. Would you like this code snippet? Yeah.

So little elements. Like, we're going to get to Dahl E for code. Yes. Very soon. Like very soon. Yeah. five years. It's already starting to happen. I mean, how many times we use that Gmail thing, does it actually guess correctly? One out of three. It's terrifyingly often. Yeah, 50% I think it's

50% for me. I like to write my own words. So when I see it just out of complete contempt for how good it is, I just rewrite it with more. I know. I do too. I never let it. That's so funny. I have the exact same oppositional defiance where I'm like, yeah, nice try. No, I'm just going to make, I'm just shipped it up. It's like, I'd love to and it's like, invite you to. And I'm like welcome you at. Exactly. Screw you. You got it.

I'll be like hope to and it'll be like talk to you soon. I'm like, catch up shortly. Yeah. No. Just I do not. You're not going to win machines. No. Fight against the machine.

Rage against the machine. If you are a startup, you need to sign up for Notion. Noot, I.O.N. Notion is the greatest piece of software. I've used in the last couple years, I love notion. And I just want you to go to notion.com slash twist and sign up for free right now. You go to slash twist. You get it for free.

At my companies, Inside and Launch, we run the entire companies on Notion, and I run my personal household on Notion. I run everything on Notion, including my own personal notes. Notion is the most amazing tool. It's like a wiki. It's like a database. It's like a Google sheet. It's got tables. The apps work seamlessly across every device you have. Whether you're on your phone, your iPad, your laptop, your desktop, big screens on desktop, it is perfect. And they have thought about every single function in your life, personal, private, public, business, accounting, sales, CRM, every single function in an organization or your personal life, and they've made gorgeous, stunning templates. If you were to just go to Notions

template library and look at theirs, then you go Notion Library, you just type in Notion templates and then whatever keyword, O-K-Rs, to-do list, task list, whatever you're trying to do, employee reviews. Literally, it's built into Notion.com slash twist to start for free. Again, Notion, N-O-T-I-O-N-N-O-N-O-N-O-N-T-O-R-A-R-G, what a great m.com slash twist to take the first step toward your organization dominating and being productive and the knowledge base has arrived and it's gorgeous and it's beautiful and it's notion notion dot com slash twist okay speaking of raging against the machine yeah same segue in my brain segue in your mind who the information war is real friends okay uh the pentagon and we suck at it and unfortunately like spoiler alert we're not even very good at it we're doing it

But we kind of suck at it. The Pentagon ordered an audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after social media platforms found fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military. So these are accounts that, for example, advanced anti-Russia narrative citing the Kremlin's imperialist war in Ukraine and warning of the complex direct impact on Central Asian countries. And so on and so forth. They found the sort, these are anonymous sources in the Wall Street Journal. But they noted that U.S. Central Command, SentCom, is one of the groups whose activities are facing scrutiny, and that significantly they found that the pretend personas employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China did not gain much traction. And that overt accounts actually attracted more followers. And it sort of sounds like, according to the journal, that literally Facebook came to SentCom and was like, guys.

Are these your accounts? If we can figure out that it's your accounts, so can the Gen Zs. Like, they can snip it out. I mean, and the thing is, we found all the Russian accounts, right? And there was part of the Mueller report. Everybody was like,

oh, there was no Russian interference, Russian hoax. Except the Mueller report has all these indictments and they found all these boiler rooms where they were creating all these memes and all this stuff. There was Russian interference. It's proven.

Did it impact the election? Probably didn't change it, but it definitely impacted it on the margins. But the truth is, Even those kind of sucked and were easy to identify. The problem is, is anybody trying to identify them? And do they take them time? Do they take them down before they have their impact?

Right. So even if they're easy to identify, if I got you to think Hillary Clinton is a lizard with a Pizza Gate basement thing, if I influenced you in the 60 days and you found out about it six months later, well, it's too late already impacted the election. So we're done here. Yeah. So I don't doubt that they're easy to spot. I don't doubt that they're easy to spot.

And I'm sure that there are some that are less easy to spot. And this piece makes a good point, quoting people saying, you know, look, our enemies are doing this. Like, siops is real. We are in an information war full stop. That is a huge way in which countries, all kinds of countries, including ours and including Iran and including China and including Russia, are attempting to gain advantage and leverage. That is unquestionably happening. And so, you know, sources in the government are saying to the journal, like, I hope you don't think that we shouldn't be. engaging in this considering that it's happening. You wouldn't like it otherwise it's a completely

one-sided war. It's a two-sided war. We have to do it. But the more important thing to do here is to be better is to go find existing people who are influential and flip them. That's what we need to do. We need to find like, oh, hey, this person's a crazy, you know, left or right person. We need to meet with them and be like, hey, we got you on these things. How'd you like to come work for us? By the way, we know we got you on these things. Taxes, whatever grift that they're doing. Oh, hey, grifter. We know you grifted this.

We'd like you to continue your grift. By all means, continue to grift, and we will part in your grift. But we would like you, there'll come a time where you're going to post some things for us. That may go against what you're doing here, but there will come a time when we're going to ask you. I like it. That's what I'm doing. Assets, cultivating assets. By the way,

cultivate some assets. That is certainly also happening. You can be sure there are MAGA assets working for the government and there are woke, whatever assets on this side. They got them all dialed in. And whenever they want, they're like, yeah, we're going to have you dial this way or that way. Not for political reasons, but maybe for the safety of the country, maybe to find out these maniacs.

Probably also political reasons. Yeah. Yeah, like these maniacs from January 6th. name of them, oathkeepers? Oathkeepers. Like, those idiots are so dumb that they were putting stuff. The reason they're all going to jail is because they all put this stuff into group chat. We're going to flip the election.

We're going to take over the government. I mean, they're so dumb. The oathkeepers in this whole group of people are so dumb that when they wanted to do this conspiracy, they let anybody into group chat and said, here's the conspiracy. They were so dumb, they didn't even do it in person

where they could say, everybody put your phones in the draw here, we're going to scan, everybody lifts your shirt. The mob knows how to do this. The mob doesn't use group chat. Yeah. You go to the clubhouse.

Go to the clubhouse, for God's think. Played some poker, and then we're going to have a real conversation and like three guys might ask you to strip down to your skivies to check if you're wired. Not saying I know. Just saying.

I'm not saying a bit of a situation before where people check for wires, but tellingly, I'm like, so believe me, you're just speaking my language right now. I'm listening to all the gray man books. And then I just, I binged that, uh, on my rainy day, I binged that terminalist show on Amazon Prime, which is unbelievably violent, but I'm just like in full spy mode right now. Yeah. So this, there couldn't have been better timing for me to see this article today and be like, yeah.

But here's, by the way, House of Dragons. I don't want to Thursday we'll talk about it. I'm sure. I just watched House of Dragons last night. Yeah. Literally they're just like murdering wives. Just everybody's getting murdered.

It's just, they were like, this time will be different. Nope. No. Everybody's getting murdered. No. Everybody's being raped and tortured and murdered and stabbed. It's insanity. It's insanity.

It's like a crazy bait and switch. Like, I think they were just like, no, no, don't worry. We were you in? And by the way, at the end of the show, two people will come on. And it will be very great gender representation. And they'll explain to you. what happened and why it's from female gays and why this is, you know. But anyway, it's just chaos and murder.

I will be sure to do. Yeah. It's an incredible show. I'm reading the recap. I really like the book version of this. I just read the recaps because I can't stomach it. If you got any trauma in your life or you don't like murder and torture, rape and anything else, please don't watch the show.

They should put a giant, they must be a huge trigger. I mean, it's funny that I just watch a show where like literally a guy gets gutted and paraded around by his intestines. and I was fine with that sort of. But like this is the sadism. It's a sadistic nature of some of these shows that it is. You know, it's not like somebody just randomly gets murdered or it's a war. It's like gleeful.

They just like, it's the gleeful torture of humans. All right, well listen, our military needs to be better at this. I'm sure we will be congratulations. However, I do want to point out one thing I thought that was kind of interesting. They said the two most followed assets in the data, a report by Graphica and Stanford, were that, um, that they said the most successful accounts were overt accounts that publicly declared a connection to the U.S. military. So just like be influencers.

Yeah, there's a ton of these Chinese accounts. We're the military and we're awesome. There are known Chinese state actors who have interacted with me and many other folks who are like, you're wrong about what's going on in Shanghai with the lockdown. They'll just interact with you. Yeah. So it's almost like you get to interact with the press secretary. You know, like there's always a, yeah.

Yeah. Own it. Or for them, it's just. journalists like their journalists work for the state so you're like oh hey carers swisher and it's like yeah i'm i'm cariswisher of this chinese morning whatever harold and but they work imagine if carers swisher worked for trump or puttun whoever's in charge that's what's happening in china so you'll have this like high-profile journalist who will argue with you and you're like i'm having an argument with a journalist like um like half journalist half state i don't think you're a hundred

percent objective here. Yeah, they don't have exactly the same line between a journalist and the CIA PR machine. Interesting. It's interesting that people are monitoring this. Oh, of course they are. We're in an active information war. I mean, when you talk to like, you know, NatSEC people, they're just like, the idea that we would talk about conflict with China without talking about information is such a bizarre.

You cannot segment these things out. or even like Russia's Ukraine attack also is an information war. Like everything is. I wonder if these, do you think they put these fake, maybe the counts that got busted, they put out there to get busted on purpose so you don't get the real good ones? I know what I wonder too. I'm like, I would just put out the klutzy one and hide the good one. They probably have like four layers.

Like, here's the ones we know you're going to catch real easy. Here's the ones we know you're going to catch next. These are the ones that you may or may not catch. And then these are the ones where you actually flip the people and you have no idea. And those people will never say it because the second they do, we're going to indict them for the 20 crimes they did that we know about. That's the stuff I love. I love that. I mean, like, I don't believe for a second that we just, and maybe this is me being naive and hopeful, but I don't believe for a second that we're just like so clunky at it that we're just like.

Hey, fellow kids, I would like to talk to you about U.S. national exceptionalism. Is it a skateboard over? Yeah, like no way. Hey, would anybody like to talk about the insurrection or Ukraine? Right. Hello. Hey, guys. What do you think about like, I don't know, storm in the capital?

Like, no, there's a gray man version of this. Maniacs. There are people who are good at it. Yeah, this got it. We hope. We hope. Listen, if you're a founder or an employee of a startup, it's critical that you become capital efficient at a time like this.

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adopter because you never don't get burned by buying Apple products first out the gate. Yeah, wait three months. There are reports that the iPhone 14 Pro, Jason found this one early this morning. The iPhone 14 Pro camera, apparently when users, try to operate it, the fancy new camera, whatever it does that's fancy and new, because there always is that with a new iPhone. It evidently makes a rattling noise and the image. It's insane. You gotta watch this video. It's absurd. I mean, it feels like it's a joke. Angry hummingbird fart sound. It's crazy. I mean, it is, feels like it's about to blow up.

It's like Mission Impossible. Like the message you're just heard is about to explode in 10 seconds. So that's a TikTok user named Damien who posted this and said this pretty much only happens in like Snap in some sort of third party app. Because it only happens on third party apps, people think it's probably a software bug. Because of course it is. Because of course Apple did not give these third party app makers the specs for their fancy new camera stuff because they might have like leaked it. Why would it be like leap? I don't understand. There's like how does it vibrate?

Why does it vibrate? I don't really understand that. but maybe it's just like, I mean, software controls everything. So maybe it's like activating the shutter. No, no, no. Image state, it has something to do with the speculation is it has something to do with optical image stabilization. Right. So it's image stabilization.

Wild. Yeah. Okay. Trying too hard. Yeah. This is like one of those quick fixes. I think they get the fix out for this in, you know, like two days or something. This is why you wait.

Like I'm waiting for 16.1 or whatever the new iOS is. Just call me when there's a point one and then I'll download it. And then you get the next, you get the second shipment of new iPhones. You never buy the first stuff. And here's the thing that's really important. There are like these analysts in China and Hong Kong who know all the supply chain. They are saying the demand for the iPhone 14 Pro is insane right now. So this indicates that the pro version is selling higher than the 14 according to what's being

ordered for it so they're going to have like maybe 10% more phones sold or whatever. So I think my J trade of Apple is going to be higher, is going to be like a big win. Because despite inflation, the great jobs and the spending of Americans continues, even though interest rates have gone up. Mortgages are absurdly expensive or getting close to triple or it's over 2x what it was. Mortgages are over 6%. I got locked mine in at 2.7. something like I've served more than triple at the what the lowest triple triple right or triple and maybe not more than it's almost 2.2 maybe at the 2.3 I think I got mine at and now it's over six so that is almost triple it's two and a half I mean it's crazy and yet

americans be shopping like nobody is slowing dead they're just putting it on credit cards they're figuring it out like oh buy now pay later we have money buy now pay later galore and it's so interesting because the iPhone 14 was like the most perfunctory of updates I mean it was like they could barely even be bothered to sex it up and make it seem like this is an awesome must have update. But for people who have been holding on since the 12 or the 12 minute, you know, it's like anybody who skipped an update now wants this one. And they're saying that they are actually going to switch production lines potentially because they are forecasting an increase of iPhone 14 Pro models by about 10%. Now, that could also be because people didn't buy that many new iPhones during the pandemic. Or maybe Apple put in a small order because they thought there would be headwinds in the economy and they were wrong?

Maybe. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I don't. It's hard to tell what's going on in the economy right now. Like we keep raising the rates.

We're going to raise the rates again. The market has collapsed. It's been bouncing along the bottom, but we still have a lot of jobs. But unemployment may be ticking up a little bit, but it's still historically low. The amount of inventory in the hot markets is going through the roof for homes, but the home prices haven't come down that much. but price cuts are starting to happen, but mortgages have two and a half X. So I feel like we're right in the slush,

like where everything's changing, like we're in the middle of the hurricane, and we're going to know, like, in the fourth quarter, what actually happened. Right. Because all the data is trailing. All the data is trailing.

There is only one thing that I can predict with confidence, and that is that Apple will sell a record number of iPhones, just like it always does. It's so crazy to me, but I, you know, but I think the thing is. It's like a subscription service at this point. Yeah, I feel like we've underestimated the value we get from our smartphones dramatically. And therefore, because we bought them originally for 400 bucks, 500 bucks, we never conceived

of what a great deal of $500 smartphone was. A $500 smartphone that you could sell for $200 after three years, or even say $100 after to three years. It means $400. $400 is about a dollar a day if you kept it for a year. But if you kept it for three years, it's like 35 cents a day. 35 cents a day for a product that does what a smartphone does for you. Most people are using their smartphones five, six, seven hours a day means net net you're paying five cents an hour to use this thing. Yeah. It's worth much more than that. The amount of value you get from is worth much more. I mean, it's the thing that untethered you from your desk, it's the thing that opened up a window into the entire world

and all of the world's information. It is the thing that gets you where you're going, if you're going somewhere, like if you think about all the things, anxiety, depression, moving, self-loving, all these things are part of this. Ruin all our jam lies, ruined our necks. Like, it's, you know, it's why everything hurts all the time because everyone's like, do you have that thing where you go like this and you crack your neck because you've been hunched over so much? Yeah, text neck. And I think a lot of people are, I think the eyesight issue, is because of the phone as well. I am starting to do a little digital detox.

When I'm out with my girls, sometimes I will put my phone into airplane mode, leave it in the bag, try to challenge myself for the entire dinner to not touch it. So I'm now having to discuss with my wife, like, hey, listen, I'm going to be out with the girls, but I'm going to be phone light. I will keep it on, but assume I will not see your text,

you've got to call me, and I have it on due not to serve, but I have you on my favorites list, so you will come through. If it doesn't, call me twice. I think it comes through automatically if you do that. So, yeah, I'm trying to detox

a little bit on the margins. But yeah, it is what it is. You take the good with the bad and you have to have some discipline. Yes. All right. Speaking of the economy and layoffs and jobs,

the rifts continue. People continue to cut down the size of their organizations. I think this is something we expected that would happen until the end of the year. So there are always second order effects when you do this. I think we, you and I on this very podcast, maybe a month ago, people were like, hey, the impact of these is going to screw with the diversity inclusion progress people are making. And I said, yeah, you know, I'm trying to remember, do you remember what our thesis is, where this I were about why this would happen?

Well, I think we're saying that much like our story notes, that for companies who really embarked on very specific hiring efforts, they have new employees who are likely to be. And also your, potentially your least expensive employees are going to be people of color, people from underrepresented minorities because you have made this like specific effort to beef up hiring or even like, I mean, I think we straight up saw it at Warner Brothers, where it was like they had a whole slate of people and shows media in particular where it was like you brought on a whole bunch of people to do more diverse programming and then just nuked them all. And so it basically looks like, at least at Warner Brothers, it's like people are saying it looks like the optics. That Zodzlov is just trying to get rid of all the black people. Yes. And it's, you know, it's unclear. It might just be that these are new initiatives that have yet to make any money. and it was the easiest thing to cut.

Yeah. I think another way to look at it would be a lot of these companies really cared about diversity inclusion. They tried it, I don't know, let's say in the developers. And there's a pipeline problem there. Maybe they couldn't fill those positions as much as possible. But they found, oh, my God, in customer support, in marketing, and whatever other categories, some entry-level things, somewhere where you're hiring a large number of employees,

oh, we could hit our diversity goals there. So they said, okay, well, let's just get the diversity win because the world is really pissed at us, rightfully so. So we'll try to get more diversity on the customer success team. Okay, now you don't have as many customers. Your Airbnb, your Twilio, you're whoever. Okay, we have too many customer success people. We're going to automate some of that and we're going to make cuts.

But that's where your diversity inclusion was, you know, doing really well, and now of a sudden your diversity numbers crash or crater because of that. So Twilio made an announcement that they were cutting 11% of their workforce last week, and this is where we knew somebody would anticipate this, but I didn't think somebody would vocalize it. A friend of the pod, Jeff Lawson said the layoffs would be carried out through an anti-racist, anti-oppression lens to avoid dramatic impacts to marginalized group. Okay, good intent, right?

but he's now getting tunged on everywhere because of this because people are like, well, that means you're going to lay off the white people or the Asian people. And here we are in the circular racism, anti-racism, what do you think? Yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a super messy discussion and it's a hard thing to have said. Because he said it on TV, right? Like there was no, there's no, there's not a lot of room for nuance or even explaining what that means. Like if what he means is literally a lens, like we're just going to make sure that we're not using unconscious bias to get rid of employees without thinking. We're going to keep this top of mind and ask ourselves what it means for our company.

Or we're going to say, wait, did we actually just staff up customer success with more diversity? hires instead of actually, you know, creating training and like, are we going to make up for layoffs that we have to do? Like, this could mean so many things within an organization, but we are so racially triggered right now as a country. And really divided with a lot of like overt racism that is manifesting as like, oh, well, when you say this stuff, you're just virtue signaling or being woke or whatever, as opposed to like trying to correct longstanding problems and be conscious of what it might look like when you do layoffs at your company. It's just like it's a, it's a hard and a deep and a nuanced conversation to have.

And this wasn't. Of course, that we're not going to do any of that when we talk about it. This is also the first time, let's face it, this is the first time that we've had a down market since diversity and inclusion existed as a practice. So, you know, we've had a what? We had a 2008 to 2021 to 2021, 2021, 2022, bull market. So you have 14-year bull market. We all knew it would come apart at some point. I thought I started sounding alarm at about 10 years, 12 years. Hey, this probably won't last, uh, Bryce for it. So somewhere in those 14 years, probably the second half of it, these tech companies were getting, you know, they were getting really scrutinized. Hey, show us your numbers. They started showing their numbers. So now they're attuned to this. So what do you do in lay

somebody who works in diversity and inclusion is going to say like, hey, wait a second, I'm trying to hit my numbers. You gave me a mandate. And now you just cut my numbers in half. Okay. So now we have to look through it through a lens. Well, what does that even mean? And now I can tell you what's going to happen here.

You're going to have somebody who was laid off or some group of people say, they're going to find some attorney who's going to take on this case. Well, was I fired because I was white or Asian or otherwise Indian. whatever the overrepresented group is. And that's the chaos we're in, right? Nobody has any goodwill, nobody has any thoughtfulness about this. It's all just dunking. I think, when in fact, Jeff's a great person who wants to be thoughtful.

Being thoughtful about this is the only, right? Like, the reason that companies are in a position where their newest employees are all people of color is because of structural bias. And it would be very easy as a company to basically be like, yeah, we just made this list and we didn't think about why we made this list and we didn't think about who's on it. And if you have a list and it's 90%. people of color, you know, the marketplace story that this links to points that out,

or quotes someone from an HR and staffing firm saying, like, you could put together a list and then look at it through this lens and be like, huh, this list is 90% people of color. It doesn't necessarily mean you change who you lay off, but it would mean that going forward, you'd be like, how did that happen? And how can we correct it? Sure. And we speculate, right? How that could have happened. There's going to be a bunch of Twitter threads about how we laid off 90%.

of our people of color. Yeah. You have to be very careful about this. And also, by the way, this is going to be a Supreme Court case next month. All these Ivy League schools have been dealing with this.

Right. Because they want to have a diverse group of people at the schools. And there are a couple of demographic groups that have over-indexed on standardized testing,

which was how they were deciding who got in. Now they're like, okay, we're going to not use that or we're going to use other criteria, which feels like you just rug pulled the people who you told for 30 years to focus on standardized testing because that was the way in,

and now you're rug pulling them, and now they don't get to get in because they did the standardized testing prep that you told them to do. The whole thing is super gnarly. It's like, it's going to be crazy. When this Supreme Court thing comes out, I think it's going to be like,

it's going to be like another Roe v. Wade bomb. People are going to be like, how do I even think about this? I'm trying to figure out how I think about it. Should it be merit-based based on IQ test, but aren't IQ tests a little bit biased? And then are there actually innate differences like the book of the bell curve found

in different demographic groups on how they score on IQ tests? Is that because there actually is IQ? Is it course your definition of IQ? And it turns out like your definition of IQ and who made the test was a bunch of white, Western European people and

I mean it's but one example like they said in this great example right because it's sort of like everything fundamental that we think we know about how to evaluate people is built on some kind of a rotten system and then how do you start over? You can't start it and there will be

anybody pretending that there won't be losers is lying to you there will be winners and losers of course. There will be people who historically would have gotten jobs who were mediocre who maybe now won't because someone better will come along. And you won't just like opt into the thing that was your birthright before. And to go full circle, we had this discussion with the first story on Be Real.

Like, are you, is even going for a higher education to an Ivy League school or whatever school? Going to set you up for success as much as learning to be a coder or to learning to be an entrepreneur, going to found a university, whatever it is. And seeing how you do on that path because those people seem to be the ones who are accumulating power and wealth and society. society. So we're like sitting here fighting over the IQ test and the Ivy League and how they let people in when in fact it might be the developers and entrepreneurs who inherit the world and change the world. And it might be your skills that actually define it, not your ability to ace some standardized test, which, you know, I thought there was a really interesting example I heard on a podcast, find the sources, but they were doing the analogy part of the tests and they're like blank is to blank like cup is to saucer. And it's like, Like, by the way, the concept of a cup and saucer is a uniquely like European English thing. Like, if you're from, you know, I don't know, India, China, Africa, South America, maybe Ireland they had it. Yeah, like depending on where you, right.

If you weren't a country that was colonized by the British, you might have never have saucer. Maybe cup and saucer means nothing to you. Saucer means like something flying in the sky. Like it means like a frisbee. It doesn't mean who puts a plate under a cup and why is there a plate under a cup? under a cup. Like, you drink from a cup. You may drink from a jar, you know, but like, a saucer? What does that even mean? So you, you, you're going to fail that question. So a lot of this might be a rigged system that is antiquated, that the whole thing needs to be thrown in. Right.

No easy answer here, folks. Anyway, it's messy. I honestly, I congratulate Jeff for opening up up race human, like a really nuanced conversation and saying like, we're going to keep trying. Because this is downturns are when companies historically stop trying. Like, it's easy to try hard at diversity when you have the luxury and you've got the extra money and you've got the, you know, the whatever you're not in some kind of a crisis. And as soon as things get tough is usually when companies are like, we don't have time for that. So good for him. How about also giving people the benefit of the doubt? I saw him getting savaged on like, you know, all different places, social and in news stories. It's like, how about somebody who has created massive economic

value and opportunity for the world, made every product and service 10% better. And we just assume that they're a good person because they've done great work prior and we just give them the benefit of the doubt. Like I just, how about we start there? Like that, right? Like, I don't, if you're, if you're in time, if you, if somebody comes along into the world and is like, I'm just trying to make things incrementally better for as many people as I can.

And your response is to be like, you're just a woke idiot. and a lup dart and a snowflake and a do-da-d-da-da-da-da. Like, that's on you. That is telling you, that is saying more about you. Yeah. Than it is about him. Because good for him. But also, yes, social media is the worst.

And we could have, and you can have a thoughtful discussion about it, right? Like, I think that's, where's the thoughtful discussion about this issue? Well, right. Like, we just have, I'm not mad. I mean, I'm mad at Twitter. We just had a thoughtful discussion about it. Like, okay, yeah. Like, it's complicated.

It's complicated. You've got to be thoughtful. And it sounds like what he said was... And you have to try. And if everybody who tries gets like screamed out of the room, they're going to stop trying. My first reaction was he should have said nothing because it's easier to just put your head down and say nothing.

Right. But if you say nothing, then you're not having the discourse. We couldn't have had our discourse here without him saying something. So this is the problem in the world. You want to have an intelligent discourse about something, but the cost of even bringing it up is like you're going to get savage. So I think we have to steer

towards having like giving people the benefit of the doubt and then having a thoughtful, vibrant discussion about it, right? Because I feel like what we have now is intellectual terrorism. Like it really is. Sure. And it shuts people down. Yeah, shut people down. Attack them.

Like you and I have this conversation here. How many people are willing to even have this discussion? And we're two white people having this discussion who are successful and who are, you know, in the Western world in Sanford Bay Area. So like, it's hard to have these discussions. I'm willing to have them. but you got to come to it with this could be like the first time society

is actually going through this. I think it's the first time society is actually going through this. And so let's just be thoughtful folks. Okay, it's Monday, so we live in the future. Yes. Here we go. Toronto-based trans pod

has unveiled plans for something called a flux jet, which is a fully, this is so up my alley, a fully electric transport system that's a hybrid between an aircraft and a train. Okay. What does that even mean? It looks like a hyperloop to me, but. It's like a flying maglev.

I mean, it's definitely maglev. It's currently in the concept stage, but would involve an 82 foot long train that levitates magnetically to reduce friction. So they have these in Japan already, these maglev trains. They go 300 miles an hour, 250, 300. Yeah, this is bonkers. And then I'm trying to figure out at some point, it sounds like they plan to build a,

there's some, there is some hyperloop stuff in here. The company plans to build a, 200-mile vacuum tube network between Edmonton and Calgary to cover that trip between the two cities in 45 minutes. It would carry up to 54 passengers. Those passenger tickets would be 44% less than plane tickets. And it would pull power, this is what's so interesting, is that it wouldn't be additional strain on the grid. The idea is that it would pull power from the existing electric grid through magnetic fields. So just sort of like relies, I think, on the existence of a electricity. Okay, confusing. For propulsion. I'm down. Yeah, okay. They're going to build a 200-mile

vacuum tube between Edmonton and Calgary. So they're building the hyperloop, basically. And they've raised 550 million from British investors. Wow. Yeah. They say the total project is expected to cost $18 billion. The trains would go 621 miles per hour, faster than a commercial jet, and three times the speed of most high speed trains. So trains would leave every two minutes. Incredible. 54 passengers, yeah. I mean, the, the big challenge here, at least in the developed world, like fully developed

world, is regulations. We don't have the ability to tell people, we're putting this thing through your backyard. And we have regulations. And this is the big problem in the United States. Like, to just get this built, they're doing it between the, their plan is to do the triangle in Texas with the high-speed rail. Austin, Dallas, Houston is a triangle. And so eventually, if you complete the triangle, you know, it's going to be like super fun and fast to go between those cities and the economic impact of incredible. But then you look at somewhere like the

Northeast corridor, there's so much regulation, so many different jurisdictions that we can't ever get the Accela to go a reasonable speed. I mean, don't even get me. we started on California on their high-speed rail project that's like 20 to 30 years in the making and it's just let me just light billions of dollars on fire every single year instead of well and here's and here's a public transportation would save so I mean gigatons this is a gig a ton scale solution but it's I think they the problem I have with this California one is they said it would be like a hundred and 25 or 150 miles per hour and I'm like wait a second yeah if we're to invest tens of billions of dollars, we're not even getting the speeds they have in Japan and China.

Like, can we get this to 250 miles an hour and make it less than three hours? Like, if it's still three hours to go from San Francisco to L.A., or they, you have to go, it slows down when you get closer. Like, do you realize nobody's going to stop flying in planes? Like, the promise of Southwest at, you know, $99 a flight and it's an hour of flight, people are just not going to get, they're not going to go to the train depot, which they have to take some half an hour,

45 minutes you got to. I mean, I wonder like, I wonder if Canada will have different regular, like you wonder to the extent, I mean, it's funny, right? Because democracy's so messy.

It's like, yeah, like some government would have to come along and basically just declare eminent domain and be like, we're building this. And we have to build it because it's a climate crisis. And it's that or you all fall into the ocean and die.

The end. And like, I'm not going to happen. Yeah, the eminent domain thing is like, Like, I have an idea for it. Like, we really care about property rights here and everything with that. I think there's got to be some, like, absurd payment to people where they get, like, four times whatever the assessed value is. If eminent domain happens.

And the community in California gets to vote on it. There's got to be some trigger. We're in a democracy. We can say, hey, this is for the greater good. Speaking of which, I wouldn't say, you know, like, exactly where I am in the peninsula. But I just got the email from my nimbly neighbors. I got an, yeah, the nimbly neighbors email me. Would you be considering, would you build an ADU on your property so that we don't have to build housing?

And they're like, here's how we skirt the housing. If this many of us build ADUs and then we say we're going to give it to our domestic staff or we're going to rent it publicly and we put it at this price. or we rent it to our kids. So there's like a whole little cobble going around, just like the Atherton story. So I'm infiltrated. None of them watch the spots and they don't know I'm infiltrating. But accessory dwelling units,

you know, what they call nanny units or in-law units. Right. They're not a substitute for housing. They're great. They're great to have. They allow multi-gen housing. You know,

you can put one or two people, maybe a couple. Like, it's great when your teenage kid wants to live in there, but like that doesn't not solve housing. Well, here's the thing. they're doing this, but they're doing it to skirt the regulations of building more units. I mean, that's just astonishing. And they're kind of, I don't want to say they're explicit about it, but they're explicit about it.

So I'm collecting my information and just really like a fly on the wall listening to these conversations. Here's the here's the grift, the rich people grift. Build these ADUs. Pretend you're renting them and get an extension on because if you say you're, if you have the intent to build it and you file the form. So if I'm willing to file a form, we can push the issue of multi-unit out 10 years is what the discussion is. So the accessory, well, which makes sense because you're, even when you're building units,

like in the Atherton story with, you know, Mark and Laura Andresen, in that case, if you said, hey, we're building the units, that's what the government's looking for, right? We're looking for you to break ground and part of breaking ground is filing. So this is the griff. If we all file that we're doing ADUs, we're in compliance. We can't get down the road for 10 years. You potentially don't have to build any ADUs even for 10 years, let alone any multi-in-alf.

What if I change my mind and somebody else then decides that they're going to do it? So that, you know, we keep or I do it and then I changed my mind that I was going to make it a low rent one. Yeah. So they had me fill out a form and it's like, who is it for? Yourself? Domestic help. or, you know, anybody who wants to rent it and what price.

And they're kind of like, make it a low price and make it anybody can rent it. So then we check that box. Right. So the manipulation, the fix is in. The biggest enemy to humanity is all the damn humans, right? Like this was also most of the reporting that I did around lithium extraction in the United States. Like, we need to extract lithium in the United States. We're going to have to mine our own resources.

Of course. If we want to be energy independent in the future. And everyone's like, yeah, I totally agree. Unless that mine is anywhere near me. and then hell no. Drill, baby, drill. Let's go. I mean, I think it all changes because of what happened with this Germany-Hooten relationship.

Like, I was, I don't know if you saw my tweet this weekend. I just went down the geothermal rabbit hole. Yeah. It turns out like building, people stop doing geothermal because it was like expensive compared to just like putting a furnace in. But it turns out geothermal means like you don't need gas and you're independent and off the grid. But it's a pain in the ass to put one in for 15 to 30K instead of one. for 5K.

But if the Germans do this and they're pretty good at like, you know, like the government's pretty good over there getting shit done. Yeah. If they just said, hey, we'll buy every geothermal unit. We'll pay to put it in anybody's home or we give you a 50 year alone for it. They could just reduce their dependence on Putin every year by, you know, a couple of percentage points until they're completely energy independent. And nobody's even talking about geothermal.

I know. Geothermal is such a weirdly neglected part of the energy mix. We had quays on. They're doing like the millimeter wave drilling for like super deep, like ultra deep geothermal. And what was so cool about them is that not only is geothermal totally an overlooked technology, which just makes no sense. There's an X. I think it's a Google X spin-out.

Dandelion, I want to say, is a geothermal company that's operating in the eastern seaboard region. But what's so interesting about geothermal is that you can take people who and equipment from the fossil fuel industry, just convert them. Right. To drilling, right? Basically, your geothermal.

You drill down, that's the issue is if you install this, right? My understanding, you correct me if I'm wrong, you're more of an expert than I'm. You have to drill a hole, so it's a pain in the ass. But it used to be like, but it used to be really hard to drill holes.

Now you're saying it's getting easier to drill them. So you drill a hole, like they can go like 40 feet down, 50 feet down. So if it's freezing and bosting or it's 100 degrees and, you know, I don't know where in California. It turns out the earth is going to be either warm or cold down there.

So if it's really hot where you are, it's 50, 40 degrees under there. It'll cool your air to 40 degrees. And if it's hot, if it's freezing cold, it's going to be 50 degrees down there. So it'll help heat your home. Yeah. Turns out 50 degrees is good temperature for humans. Yeah. That's what it is down there.

I mean, it's super, it's really fascinating. We have so many options for, we actually really do have so many interesting options. for energy and we're just not even... It's just been too easy not to do it and those days are over now and so we're going to have to start doing it. The install is expensive and time consuming, but the benefit in the long term is extraordinary.

Same with solar, same with battery, same with geo- And there are actually geothermal incentives in the new inflation reduction act. Yes, that was a big... The geothermal community got very excited about that because usually they're completely ignored. We didn't do the Doquan story, but Doe-Cwan from Luna's allegedly on the run.

That's what you need to know. Yep. Interpol is on the case, great, man. Great, awesome. Red note is coming. Who knows? All right, everybody. What a great episode.

Don't forget tomorrow. I am going to speak with Vinny, Vinnie Barara, who is Prit Barra's brother. And I'm going to talk about the launch of his new startup mojo.com, which lets users invest in pro athletes, just like their stocks and they're launching. And they're doing it with football just in time for the season. really fascinating interview, fascinating God. Can't wait for people to hear that. Same. Great conversation.

And you know is not going to be a slow newsweek. So just keep coming back every single day. See you tomorrow. Stay with us. See tomorrow. Bye.